Holocaust Museum to be Built in Sweden

In memory of Holocaust survivors from Sweden, the country plans to launch a museum in Malmö including a center devoted to the diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazis during the Holocaust.

Last week Swedish Minister of Social Affairs and Sports, Annika Stranhall, said on Twitter that “it feels more important than ever.”

Swedish Minister of Social Affairs and Sports, Annika Stranhall

Holocaust Museum to be Built in SwedenThe museum is tentatively ready to open in 2020 in Malmö, a city of approximately 350,000 inhabitants where dozens of anti-Semitic incidents are recorded annually.

Documenting surviving Swedes
The museum will focus on surviving Swedes and collect items, interviews and documents about their experiences. Many of these objects are now scattered at museums, archives and private homes.

Rabbi David Lazar showing a Torah to Swedish Government Minister Stefan Attefall

Jews in Sweden
During 1933–39, some 3,000 Jews migrated to Sweden to escape persecution in Nazi Germany. Because Sweden was neutral during World War II, it became a place of asylum for Jews from occupied Europe: in 1942, 900 Norwegian Jews were given asylum from Nazi persecution and, in October 1943, almost the entire Danish Jewish community, some 8,000 people, was transported to Sweden. Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg also saved thousands of Hungarian Jews in Budapest by providing them with “protective passports”. He also rented 32 buildings, funded by the United States, and declared them Swedish diplomatic facilities, thus bringing them under protection of diplomatic immunity.